


headed straight for your heart

by fleurmatisse



Series: west virginia, mountain mama [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, a brief appearance by Jody, hints of Sam/Eileen, mentions of depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 06:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16907640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: Cas kisses Dean, and then he doesn't call. Dean decides to take matters into his own hands.aka: How to Begin a Relationship When You're Both Kinda Weird, a sequel tofrom you the flowers grow





	headed straight for your heart

**Author's Note:**

> as it says in the summary, this is a sequel and it probably won't make a lick of sense if you don't read the other fic first. if you decide to read it on its own anyway, at least i warned you.

Cas is different, around the Hodges and Hilde. Around his family, Dean thinks as he drives Cas back to the Hodges’ house, even if Cas has never framed them that way. He’s quiet now, with his chin resting in his hand as he stares out the window, but at dinner he was downright sunny. Dean’s never heard him laugh so much, and, honestly, didn’t think he was capable of it.

“You alright over there?” he asks, since the last time Cas spoke was to ask for a ride and they’re almost to the Hodges’.

Cas huffs, almost one of his laughs. He’s quiet for another minute before he says, “I’m alright.”

Dean nods, letting the silence settle. As he’s pulling into the driveway, Cas straightens up, turning to look out the windshield. They’ve beaten the Hodges home. Dean can hear all the dogs barking as he parks in front of the porch. 

“Well,” he says. “This was a surprisingly eventful day.”

Cas looks at him, blank for a second before he blinks, smiles, and looks away. He doesn’t make a move to get out of the car. Dean taps his thumb on the gear shift for a second and then shuts off the engine. It’s just starting to get dark out, but already there are crickets chirping.

“Feel free to tell me to fuck off,” Dean says, “but shouldn’t you be—I don’t know, excited?—to get in there?”  

Cas turns to blink at him again, more tired than blank this time. “I’m happy that the animals are here.”

“But?” Dean says.

“But,” Cas says. He smiles, brittle. “It’s different. All of it is going to be different, again. I guess I find the idea a little exhausting.” 

He looks backwards just as Dean hears a car driving up the gravel; the Hodges have returned. To Dean’s surprise, Cas doesn’t immediately get out of the car. The Hodges wave, and Dean waves back, and then they go inside and Cas is closer, somehow sliding across the bench seat without Dean noticing. He turns, and Cas kisses him. 

It’s soft and short, a real sappy romance movie first kiss, and Dean is sure his breath still reeks of garlic under the mint he took from the restaurant counter, but Cas lingers in his space anyway. 

“Thank you,” Cas says.

“Any time,” Dean replies, watching his mouth quirk up as he slides back across the seat and out of the car. He looks back once as he climbs the steps to the porch, unreadable in the quickly dimming light.

Dean is so fucked.

 

It’s not that Castiel is avoiding Hilde. It’s hard to fully avoid someone while living in the same small house. He’s just—

“Castiel,” Hilde calls, in the same tone as when Annie had left dishes in the sink. 

Castiel hasn’t left any dishes in the sink, left a jacket on the back of a chair, or tracked mud into the house. He walks down to the kitchen anyway, Penelope close at his heels and Hund and Maurice still in the guest-slash-storage room’s bed. Wolfgang is sitting in Hilde’s lap already, even though she just got home.

“Sit,” Hilde says, so Castiel sits. Penelope sits, too, peering over the table at Hilde, who smiles at her before turning a more serious expression on Castiel. “You’re avoiding me.”

Castiel starts to protest. Hilde narrows her eyes. He nods. Penelope noses at his hands, so he scratches her neck, short hairs falling into his lap.

“Would you care to tell me why?” Hilde asks.

“I’m not used to living with another person,” Castiel tries. Hilde frowns. Castiel looks down at Penelope. “I haven’t explained anything that’s happened since Adina, or why that even happened, and I should have just picked up the phone when you called. Any of the times you called. I’m sorry, that I didn’t.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Hilde says. “I was, at first, when I realized how much you’d been lying, but then I figured you must have had a very good reason. I think I deserve to know that reason.”

Castiel holds himself very still. “Okay,” he says, and tells her the truth, all the way up to Naomi’s death.

She takes it better than he expected, in that she doesn’t immediately throw him out of the house in disgust and disbelief. She sits quietly for a moment before she says, “And you didn’t have a choice?”

“Sometimes I didn’t,” Castiel says. He still hasn’t looked up. Hilde hasn’t asked him to. They sit in silence for two minutes, ticked out by the clock above the sink. Hardly a blink, as long as Castiel’s been alive, but it may as well be an eternity. 

“I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve experienced or some of the things you’ve done,” Hilde says. Castiel looks up. She’s angry; he can see it in the set of her jaw, but...it’s not directed at him. “But I need you to know I don’t think less of you, and I love you just as much as I did before you told me.”

“I—” Castiel starts. Hilde deposits Wolfgang safely on the floor and rounds the table.

“Thank you for telling me,” she says, squeezing his shoulder, and leaves the room. Castiel hears the door to her bedroom open and close. 

He sits at the table until Maurice and Hund race to the door, barking to be let out, and then he sits in the garden until Hilde asks him to pick up something for lunch, and when he comes back, it’s like nothing’s changed.

He doesn’t know what to do with that.

 

Dean doesn’t have a way to contact Cas. It hit him halfway home, and he’s been annoyed with himself in varying degrees since. It’s worse when they’re at Jody’s and he thinks,  _ What if Cas forgot my number?  _ and then,  _ What if he remembers and he’s just not calling? _

Jody calls him on it over dinner. “Is something wrong over there, Dean?”

Dean breaks his staring contest with the pool of gravy on his plate, as if he’s divining the answers to the universe, and finds her smiling faintly at him. “Sorry, what?”

“I have never seen you let food get cold,” she says. 

Sam snorts when Dean reflexively takes a bite of mashed potatoes that are, maybe, a little chilled around the edges. 

“The food is great,” Dean assures her. 

“Thanks,” Jody says, looking more amused by the second. 

“He’s probably thinking about Cas _ , _ ” Sam says, because he’s still a little brother. 

“Oh,  _ Cas _ ,” Jody says knowingly. She leans toward Sam and stage whispers, “Who’s Cas?”

“A  _ friend _ ,” Dean says, even as Sam shoots Jody a  _ look.  _ “You know that case in West Virginia we told you about?”

“With the weird witches?” Jody asks. 

“He’s the weird witch who saved Dean’s ass,” Sam says. He smiles at Dean like he wasn’t tearing his hair out while Dean was missing. “Twice now, actually.”

“There was a balance of ass-saving by the end,” Dean says, which isn’t really the point. He spears a new forkful of food harder than necessary. 

“I’m sure there was,” Jody says, placating. 

“Why don’t you ask Sam about Eileen?” Dean says, and Jody doesn’t even need to ask before Sam starts rambling about the Super Cool Hunter he met on a Banshee case. 

(Eileen is pretty cool, to be fair.)

 

The Millers move to Ohio two weeks after Castiel’s return to Bubbling Springs. The house and a fraction of the property now belongs to him. (Technically, it belongs to Hilde, because on paper, Castiel simply doesn’t exist.)

He moves in the day after the Millers leave, with the bed from Hilde’s guest room and the handful of clothes he’s gotten since he got back. The dogs take to the house like they’ve lived in it their whole lives, while the cats are much more cautious. There’s still work to be done before he can get the goats and Athena moved in, so that’s what he does. 

The barn is already divided into three sections, so he only has to move the fence to make a yard around the section closest to the pastures, but that in itself is a full day of work. He stops to feed the beasts and take a broken-off barbed wire barb out of his palm and think about what he’s going to do now that Hilde and Sheena are working out whether they even want to rebuild the market. 

He still hasn’t called Dean.

At first he didn’t want to interrupt the trip to see the friend the brothers had been talking about. Then it was a matter of getting settled back into the rhythm of Bubbling Springs, even if Bubbling Springs’ rhythm had yet to return. Now he’s just...tired. He had said that, hadn’t he? And it’s only grown more pronounced the more he has tallied what he needs to do, what’s still missing. 

He tries not to make promises he can’t keep. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed Dean at all. 

 

Dean makes the executive decision to go back to West Virginia. 

(It’s definitely not because Sam caught him standing in the garage spinning his keys and told him to “ _ just go, oh my god _ .” He was going anyway.)

He mostly remembers the way to Hilde’s house, but before he even gets there he spots Cas’ truck sitting outside a frankly huge farmhouse. He idles on the road for a minute, and then Castiel’s terror of a dog goes sprinting across the yard followed by Cas himself, albeit at a much slower pace. Cas has caught Maurice and is waiting at the top of the driveway by the time Dean parks.

“Is this your new place?” Dean asks. Maurice squirms to get to him; Cas doesn’t look bothered.

“Yes,” he says. 

“It’s huge,” Dean notes.

“It is,” Cas agrees.

They stand in silence for a second and then Dean says, “Look—” at the same time Cas says, “Dean—” Maurice barks, sharp, and Dean jumps. Cas looks down at him like he forgot he was there.

“Do you want to come in?” Cas asks.

“Sure,” Dean says, and they go inside. 

Cas puts Maurice on the floor and then waves a hand toward the rest of the house. “You shouldn’t have any allergic reactions this time,” he says, leading the way to what looks like the only room with actual furniture. Penelope and some cats are lying on various pet beds in a room filled with sun.  “It’s much easier to clean cat dander with magic than a vacuum.”

“Thanks,” Dean says, surprised at the gesture. He’d kind of forgotten Cas’ house would be full of cats. He sits at a table with mismatched chairs while Cas hovers behind the chair across from him. 

“I feel like I should offer you a drink,” Cas says.

“I’m good,” Dean says. Cas still looks high-strung as he sits. “So do you wanna go first or should I?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you,” Cas says, like he can’t get the words out fast enough. So he didn’t forget the number. “I meant to, I just. Haven’t.”

He doesn’t elaborate. Dean steels himself.

“I’m not here to push you into anything you don’t want,” he says. Cas frowns. “I kind of just need you to tell me what you do want so I know what to expect one way or another.”

Cas looks at him for a long time. Long enough that Dean starts feeling more like an idiot for driving all the way out here.

“I’m not,” Cas starts, looking away for a second as his frown doubles in intensity. “I like you, Dean.”

“You could look happier about that,” Dean says, at least half-joking.

“I’m not a happy person,” Cas says, like that’s that.

“You think I’m all sunshine and rainbows over here?” Dean asks. He laughs, and Cas narrows his eyes. “I hunt monsters for a living, dude. You don’t do that if you’re not a little fucked up.”

Cas doesn’t say anything. Dean has just about resigned himself to his idiot status when Cas finally speaks.

“You really want to...date,” he says. “Me,” he adds, as if Dean would’ve thought he meant Maurice.

“I did drive eighteen hours to come talk to you,” Dean says. “So, yeah, I would like to date you if that’s something you’re interested in.”

“Okay,” Cas says. 

“Okay?”

“I think I would like to try dating you,” Cas states.

“You’re really boosting my ego here,” Dean says even though he can feel himself smiling.

Cas rolls his eyes, but Dean can see the start of a smile softening his expression. “Should I tell you you’re the first person I’ve liked enough to date?”

“That might help,” Dean says. He shrugs. “Might be better if you kissed me again.”

Cas laughs, but he gets out of his chair to lean over Dean. Just before their lips meet, there’s a crash upstairs followed by the skittering of dog claws across the floor. Cas redirects the kiss to Dean’s cheek, straightening before Dean can protest.

“You should probably get used to this,” he advises Dean as he walks toward the stairs, smiling over his shoulder. Dean leans back in his chair and waits. He hears Cas talking to the dogs the same way he was just talking to Dean and shakes his head as he smiles to himself.  _ So fucked _ . 


End file.
